


Wild Montana Skies

by sciosophia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (not Rey), Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Flirting, Bad Flirting, Ben Solo Riding A Horse, Competence Kink, Country & Western, Cowboys & Cowgirls, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Falling In Love, Hate to Love, Horseback Riding, Idiots in Love, Mention of pregnancy, Plaid Paramour, References to Canonical Parent Death, Sexual Tension, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Title from a Country Song, Unresolved Sexual Tension, mention of premature birth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 18:23:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20475512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciosophia/pseuds/sciosophia
Summary: The Skywalkers had always grazed their cows over miles of open pasture—since Shmi set the place up, Poe had said over breakfast, moving on before Rey could ask who Shmi was—and now they were to be gathered from their winter feeding and pushed on, higher up the valley and into the slope of the mountains.Rey is a ranch hand, Ben is a cowboy, and they have a herd of cattle to move across Montana.





	Wild Montana Skies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wilson66](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wilson66/gifts).

> **August 2020**: There's been a second chapter of this fic in the works for a while. I don't know when it'll be posted, but there's more of this story to come.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Wilson: thank you for the wonderful, wide-open prompt of "COWBOY BEN!!". This was a pleasure to write, and I hope it does him justice!
> 
> Thank you to: [RebelRebel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RebelRebel/pseuds/RebelRebel), as always, for her insightful and encouraging betaing; to [lifeofsnark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeofsnark/pseuds/lifeofsnark) for reading and cheerleading (and patiently fielding my questions about horses); and to [Erulisse17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erulisse17/pseuds/Erulisse17), who was so kind when I DM'd her to ask how exactly ranches work, and then set me on the right course by suggesting a cattle drive. 
> 
> I've tried to cover everything in the tags, but for context there are **content warnings** for: discussion/introspection on the canonical death of a parent; very brief mentions of pregnancy (not Rey); very brief references to a premature birth (again, not Rey).

* * *

The Montana sky was large and wide and filled with a crisp, clear dawn. It was the kind which had little in the way of human civilisation beneath it, and the sight—all those pink clouds atop grey-green valleys and red-rocked peaks—had fascinated Rey since they’d turned a corner on the highway and seen the first burst of the rising sun. 

If she’d been here with Poe, the way things had been planned, she’d have kicked her feet up on the dash and fiddled with the radio until she got a local station; the ones where the accents and slang were so thick she listened to lilt more than meaning.

But she wasn’t with Poe. He was ahead with the rest of them, an empty space in the cab of his pickup, and Rey was here, stiff and uncomfortable in the passenger side of Ben Solo’s truck. 

_It’s the coolant_, she’d said in the yard, when the horses were in the trailer and everyone was ready to go. _Let me take a look._

Ben had frowned, the way he always seemed to when he was looking at her; a sharp, hawkish thing that set Rey’s teeth on edge, the way it had done since she got here. 

The net outcome was that the others had gone ahead, reluctant to lose time to mechanical failure, and Rey had said _it’s okay, I’ll stay_, diving under the hood of the truck to find that, yes, it was leaky coolant and yes, she could fix it if the ranch had the right supplies. 

Ben had crossed his arms as he watched her work, that expression still on his face. When it came, his _thank you_ was murmured and short.

Now she felt him shift the stick beside her, guiding the pickup into the winding, climbing incline of the highway. The fact that Ben could drive a stick was a begrudging point she’d given in his favour, and Rey glanced to her left to watch. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, red plaid folded over on itself. The muscles and tendons in his forearm shifted with the push-pull, and Rey looked swiftly away.

Ben cleared his throat. 

“Where’d you learn?” 

“Hmm?”

“Where’d you learn? To fix cars.”

Rey wasn’t used to his voice. She’d heard it mostly directed at animals, whom he seemed to prefer to people. In the quiet of the cab it was rich and deep, the same as the colour of the sky, and it made Rey’s breath twist. 

“Mechanic.” Her mouth, suddenly dry, refused to spit out an entire sentence, and so she tried again. “My foster father was a mechanic and he needed help in the garage, so.”

She shrugged; refrained to add that it wasn’t help so much as unpaid, underage employment. She’d worked on engines since she was six years old.

“And the jump from cars to horses?”

There was an edge to Ben’s tone, the kind Rey was inclined to read as skeptical. It replaced the twist in her lungs with annoyance that burned low in her belly.

On impulse she leaned back in the seat and threw her heels up on the dash, crossing her feet at the ankle. Ben’s eyes flickered over them; his brows dipped in that sharp frown, and Rey’s annoyance spiked through with satisfaction. 

“Luck.” She rolled her head along the seat, turning to look at the view. The road was cutting through mountains now, carving through towering rock that spiked and jutted like a gothic cathedral. “There was a city farm behind the garage. I could see the horses from my bedroom window.”

That small glass square, a portal between the growl and grind of cars and the boxy green space of the farm beyond. It had been hidden from the world, an Eden behind rows of terraces and the old railway arches into which Plutt had moulded his garage. A farm in the middle of the city was the kind of place you couldn’t look for; you could only _know _it was there.

“I can’t imagine it,” Ben said. “Learning to ride like that.”

Trotting around and around the paddock, falling off and getting back on again in the sightline of London’s gleaming skyscrapers. There had always been noise; cars and planes and people.

Had Ben learned out here? Under that wild Montana sky?

“What about you?” she asked, trying to make the question nonchalant. 

“Summer vacations.” That explained the accent, tinged by the Great Lakes instead of the mountains. “My uncle taught me.”

Ben’s mouth flattened into a thin line, and Rey felt the atmosphere in the cab shift. Luke owned Varykino Ranch; was up ahead of them now, sitting in Leia’s passenger seat much like Rey was sitting in Ben’s. 

_They’re talking again_, Poe had said, _but it’s been ten years._

Ten years since what, he hadn’t said. 

“Do you come back for the drive every year?” 

“I didn’t. But my mom asked a few years ago, so. Now I do.” He tapped the steering wheel. “She needed someone to fill a gap.”

_A gap. _Grief prickled along Rey’s skin, replacing whatever fire had been put there by Ben’s voice.

“I liked your dad,” she said. More than, really. “He was good to me.”

“Yeah.” Ben’s tone was short; matched the sudden way he pushed on the clutch to switch gears. The truck stuttered, and Rey’s feet rattled on the dash. “I heard he got a team together for Lando.”

_Friend of mine’s looking for ranch hands out in California, if you’re interested. _

Of course she had been; regular work with a roof over her head and hot meals at least twice a day. That was enough. But she’d sat in the back of Han’s pickup as they crossed state line after state line, watching him and Chewie bicker lightly in a language she didn’t understand, and for the first time in her life, Rey felt _safe._

“He said he’d bring me up here,” she began now, moving her feet. There was a tightness in Ben’s face that dimmed the satisfaction in her gut. “Said we’d do the cattle drive together.”

Ben laughed. It was short, and only made his expression tighter.

“Sounds like my dad. Lots of promises.”

The cab felt quieter in the wake of that barked laughter. Rey’s window was rolled down an inch or so, and the air whistled through it, bringing the scent of pine and spruce and hot asphalt.

There were photographs of Han around the house; she’d seen them, on the wide mantel stretching over the fireplace, in the hall, on the little table where the phone sat. Leia would take calls leaning against the kitchen door frame, still in her yard-muddy jeans and tan-leather work gloves, and look at the picture while she talked.

Perhaps this would be easier, Rey reflected as the truck climbed the mountain, if Han had ever talked about Ben; but Han never really talked about anything. All she’d ever had were snatches, a memory or two carved out in the early morning air of Garner Valley. Han would look at the line of the San Jacinto mountains and frown, and then urge his horse on enough that Rey knew to stay quiet, riding a little way behind. In her two weeks at Varykino, she’d learned more about his family than she had in two years at Cloud City Ranch.

“Well.” Rey picked at a thread in the seat fabric. “I got here in the end.”

Lando’s warm smile, the rustle and swish as he’d swung the saddle onto his horse. _Leia called. She needs some hands up there for the drive. Told her I could spare the best in the business._

Ben said nothing; only turned the wheel into the meander and twist of the road. There was a tunnel approaching, an arch carved through striated rock, and it loomed ahead.

“Guess you’re stuck with me instead,” Ben murmured, a delayed response that was so low Rey almost didn’t catch it. 

She turned her head, a sharp movement that must have surprised him, tensing his shoulders. They crossed the threshold of the tunnel, were swallowed by it, and Rey watched the light across Ben’s face shift; soft sun to sharp LED. It changed the colour of his eyes; picking out the hazel, making them brighter.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

* * *

The cattle seemed to know on instinct why the humans were there. The Skywalkers had always grazed their cows over miles of open pasture—_since Shmi set the place up_, Poe had said over breakfast, moving on before Rey could ask who Shmi was—and now they were to be gathered from their winter feeding and pushed on, higher up the valley and into the slope of the mountains. 

“C’mon.” Kaydel rode up on Rey’s elbow. “Let’s try that way.”

They picked their way past coulees, through the pointed dips of draws—low ground between two steep banks that always reminded Rey of the shape of paper on its way to being folded in half—until the trail broke through the trees. The Missouri was glittering in the world below, throwing hot July sun back up from the water, and Rey cued Falcon gently to a stop, stealing the moment to just _look_. 

“Never gets old,” Kaydel said.

She nudged Raddus around and came back, stopping next to Rey. Kaydel had stripped her shirt off in the heat, trying it around her waist, and there were already sharp red scratches on her arms and shoulders from the larch trees. She seemed unbothered by the lack of protection from the elements or a fall as she reached up, tightening the knot of the kerchief around her neck. Her approach to her body seemed blunt; made Rey wonder if she’d been in the military with Poe. 

Kaydel was in some of the photographs too; climbing on tractors, child’s grin covered in oil and grease, or trotting horses around a pen. There was a high school graduation picture on the mantel too, next to Ben’s and Poe’s. 

_They’ve always had a habit of picking up stray kids_, Kaydel had grinned, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her arm. _So, welcome to the family._

Rey, fresh off the journey from California to Montana, had kept on with the job of fixing the fence, twisting wire ends together with pliers. The words had echoed inside her chest for days; still were, two weeks later.

They found pairs of cows and calves in the sagebrush, chewing the way they had been all winter, and pushed them back to the creek bed. It brimmed with cattle now, a noisy mass of flesh echoing its cacophony off the mountains. The others paced around on their horses, keeping count, and Jessika and Poe were visible on the opposite slope, pushing more cows in front of them. Rey could hear Bibi nipping and yapping at their heels from here.

Below, Ben was tall in the saddle, reining Silencer around to cut across the head of the herd. His horse had the same dark black coat as the cattle, and it gleamed in the bright light; looked sleek and healthy under Ben’s hand, patting her in praise. Rey had seen the way Ben talked to Silencer, low and soft, face tucked against her neck as they stood in the yard. So much more care than in the way he was with people. Another begrudging point in his favour.

The old sheep-shearing barn was half-dilapidated—_big storm in seventy-seven_, Luke said in passing, over the clamour and din of the herd—but the holding pen was still at work, and as the sun raced across the sky from left to right they steered the cattle in and, finally, shut the gate, ready to begin the drive in earnest tomorrow. 

“Somehow I always forget that the first day’s _exhausting_,” Rey said, settled at dinner, her plate heavy with stew. 

Poe laughed, leaning back against the log they’d taken as their chair. The campfire was still roaring, the washtub Luke had cooked in still sending the scent of sausage and potatoes and green beans into the evening air. 

He scratched Bibi behind the ears, spooned his own stew up to his mouth before he asked, “How’s it compared to Cali?” 

“It’s—” Rey thought about it. “The same, in most ways? Cows are cows and—”

“Cowboys are cowboys,” he grinned.

“Yeah,” Rey laughed. “Yeah, pretty much.” 

She explained the sweep of Cloud City, the way the land was flat grassland for miles until the mountains rose up to take over. It was—_nice_—to talk about Lando and Chewie, about Finn and Rose, about _Han_, without feeling like she was stepping on everyone’s feelings. Poe only sat there and listened and smiled.

“Finn was meant to work on the drive too,” Rey explained, moving her spoon around the tin plate. “But then Rose found out she was pregnant, so.”

The rasp of her spoon slowed for a moment. It was strange to be without him, as though Finn being the other half of Rey had lasted forever instead of twenty-four months. A little part of her heart wished he was here regardless; but she pushed it down, reminded herself of the grin splitting his face. _I’m going to be a dad!_ Finn deserved his own life; not everyone could live forever from winter pasture to summer pasture and over again.

“There’s a good veterinary school in San Diego,” she began again, hoping Poe hadn’t noticed the pause. “It’ll be tough going back to the college with the baby, but—Finn’s so _driven_,and he cares. He’ll make it work.”

“Sounds like a good kid.”

Rey grinned. “He’s the best.”

She scraped up the last of the stew—pieces of sausage and a thick, fluffy chunk of potato that she’d been saving until last—and hoofed it into her mouth without finesse. The metal clunked against her teeth, and she was about to remove it when she caught Ben staring at her from the other side of the campfire.

Poe was still speaking, and the cows were still lowing in the pen a little ways off, but it was white noise against the way Rey’s face flushed. She ducked her head and pulled the spoon out of her mouth, chucking it onto the plate and putting them aside like they were suddenly poisonous. She knew she ate quickly, and not always with the best table manners, but he didn’t have to look at her like _that_. 

_You try never knowing where the next meal is_, she wanted to say, but when she looked back up it was Poe getting the brunt of that hard gaze. Not that Poe had noticed; he was still speaking at length on a road trip he’d taken from Laramie to Texas.

“Hey,” Poe said now. “You okay?”

Rey glanced at Ben, an involuntary twist of her neck she couldn’t control. Poe followed it, and the joviality in him softened. 

“Is he always like that?” she asked.

Ben blinked, turned from them, caught on the call of his mother. Poe looked down at Bibi, sprawled between Rey’s thigh and his own. His little corgi legs were up in the air, and Rey watched as Poe scratched the dog's chin. 

“Ben’s a little hard to get used to.” Poe moved to rub Bibi’s belly thoughtfully. “He doesn’t like people very much.” 

Brushing down Silencer’s coat in the stables, fussing over her feed, stealing the best carrots off Leia’s table for her, and all the while looking at Rey with a feeling she couldn’t make sense of. 

_Yeah_. That checked out.

“He doesn’t like me,” she muttered, watching Bibi’s tongue lollop from his mouth in contentment.

There was a pause, filled with the chatter around them, with laughter. Poe’s gaze was burning into the side of her face.

“That’s not true.” 

Rey shook her head. 

“He barely said anything to me for the first two weeks, and then in the truck—”

_Guess you’re stuck with me_. 

She tipped her head up to look at the sky. The blue was turning lilac and orange with a sunset they could no longer see, and the stars were blinking into existence. Once the campfire was out they’d be bright in their billions.

Poe tipped his head back too. 

“I’ve known Ben his whole life. I remember him being this big—” and he held his hands up in parallel before them, roughly the size of a newborn, “—so however much he resists it, I’m his big brother. Ben arrived early, in the middle of a snowstorm, and Leia had to give birth on the bathroom floor at the ranch, so trust me when I say he’s always been awkward about things. If he didn’t like you, he’d pretend you didn’t exist. Not all this—” Now Poe waved his hands in the air. “Looking.”

“Looking.”

Poe laughed. “Yeah. With Ben it’s always the looking.”

Rey opened her mouth—trying to follow the map Poe was laying for her, the one that was making her heart race—but Luke chose the moment to yell, “huckleberry pie’s up!”, and the sudden commotion stole it from her; left only her pulse, loud in her veins, and the memory of every time Ben had given her that sharp frown.

* * *

Sunrise was Rey’s favourite time of day. It held promise, no matter the weather or what had happened the night before, and so when it broke over the mountains she sat up in her bedroll to watch. Orange and yellow and red piercing the darkness, and soft summer blue rolling up behind. A breeze rustled the pines and brought their scent with it.

The cows were lowing and hollering, beginning to amble. The horses were awake, too, and most of the people; Rey could hear the muted murmur of early morning conversation, could smell the brewing coffee. 

“I need some of that,” Kaydel said, stretching in the bedroll next to Rey. She sat up, folded her hands over her bent knees, the way Rey was doing.

Rey yawned. “I need a wash.”

The water ran rapidly downwards, following the angle of the hills, and zig-zagged through the trees, about three feet deep and four or five feet wide. Rey stood at the edge, toes curling into the grass and silt, and shucked off the well-worn wools she’d slept in.

She waded down into the creek, washed quickly and thoroughly. Rey was used to getting things done that way, fast and efficient, the sort of skill which came naturally to a childhood spent moving from one place to the next. As she dipped her head under the water to wet her hair, Rey reflected that the habit hadn’t ended with adulthood. She was a nomad here, too.

She’d left her underwear, her jeans and shirt, her sturdy boots all on the bank, and she dried off, got dressed. She was still buttoning her shirt when Ben emerged from the trees, a pale shadow who stopped short at the sight of her.

“Oh,” he said. 

His own clothes were folded over his bare arm, and his pyjama pants hung low on his hips, ready to slide off. The was a blush high up on his cheekbones, and he started to hunch, an instinctive curling inwards that curved his wide shoulders, that made him grasp the shirt to his exposed chest.

It was too late, though. Rey had seen the shape of him, the angles and lines usually hidden by plaid; saw that his body spoke to work and effort. The scar on his face flowed down like the Missouri, weaving along his neck and shoulder. In the early morning light, he seemed unreal.

Rey looked down, fighting the rose in her own cheeks, the warmth that went with it. She was immediately conscious of most of her shirt buttons, still undone, and she crossed her arms as she picked her way back up the bank.

“Morning,” she said, like she’d bumped into him in the street and not half-naked on the side of a mountain.

“Morning,” he murmured back.

“Wash,” she said, by way of explanation.

Ben nodded. “Yeah.”

Rey jabbed her thumb at the line of trees. 

“Breakfast,” she said.

Ben nodded. “Bacon.”

He was right; she could smell it on the air. The creek babbled at their feet, more talkative than they were. 

“Well.” Rey stepped back once, then again. “Bye.”

She turned and walked away, breaking their cycle of monosyllables; but the image of him stayed, the expansion of Ben’s chest as he breathed etching itself into her brain like permanent ink. 

Something in Rey tugged as sharp as a string, and at the tree line she looked back; found that Ben was watching her go. That he was _looking_. Something like that satisfaction from the truck sparked in her chest; only this was sharper, ready to unsteady her, and she had to turn away again to watch her feet; to make sure she didn’t fall.

* * *

By midday they were high up in the mountains, enough that Rey could see the road they'd driven in on as nothing more than a distant strip of curling, curving grey. The landscape folded out to the horizon, undulating hogbacks furred with forests and grass, and the sky was cloudless. 

To look ahead was to find the others, their backs to her and their shoulders rolling with the movement of their horses beneath them. Leia was at the head of the cattle, the point rider telling the people and the cows where to go, when, how quickly. Out here, where the mountains met the sky, her word was law; although, Rey reflected, watching the dip and bob of Leia’s hat, in practice it was law wherever the light touched Varykino land. There had never been a better candidate for the word _matriarch_. 

Luke was with her, their heads bent close as their horses trotted side-by-side. They looked small enough to pinch between thumb and forefinger, but even from here Rey could see their unspoken bond had carried from the ranch to the drive. Sometimes, when Rey caught a glance at them in the kitchen or out in the yard, it felt like they talked without ever opening their mouths; a look, a shrug, and one or the other would know what they meant.

Rey envied that. 

“C’mon, git up there.”

It was Ben, nudging a calf on, and his voice carried with the breeze winding itself through the air. He was further up than she was, a swing rider keeping the herd together. Poe was a little behind him, flanking the herd, and then there was Rey, pacing behind to push the slower animals on. Kaydel and Jessika flanked the other side, and their laughter was carrying too.

They were driving the cattle up the slope, through grass and brush that smelled sweet in the summer sun, mixed up with the scent of the horses and cows and the sunscreen on Rey’s arms. All five of her senses felt vivid, sun-soaked, and she patted Falcon’s neck, felt the soft shine of his grey coat under her palm.

_That’s my dad’s horse_, Ben had said, face and voice blank, a silhouette in the stable doorway. 

_Oh, yeah_, she’d replied, halfway through dragging a brush gently down Falcon’s shoulder. _Your mum wants me to take him out on the drive._

Ben had only let his mouth settle into that thin line she’d seen so often, before stomping past with a clenched fist and a frown.

Silencer was weaving her way over the landscape with ease, a dark shape against the green. Ben sat in the saddle like he’d been born there, shoulders a steady line, hips solid, reins twisted lightly in one hand while he adjusted his hat with the other. It was a testament to working muscle, core strength that kept him balanced even as Silencer began to climb steeper terrain, jolting and bumping up the mountainside.

_No wonder he looks like that with his shirt off_, she thought, and felt the blush on her face as hot as the sting of a slap.

She kept her glances up, eyes mostly on the cattle but—more than she’d have liked—seeking out Ben too. _It makes sense_, she told herself, watching him hang back a moment to speak to Poe. _I’m keeping an eye on the work._

Definitely not on the stretch of the buttons on his shirt, summer-light flannel pulling taut with the roll of his shoulders. Definitely not on the thick grip of his thighs in their denim, or the way his fingers held the leather reins. Light, firm, in control; the kind of touch she—no. No. 

Rey wasn’t going to go _there_. 

At the top of the slope the land evened out and the brush faded until only sweetgrass was left, a meadow stretching to another line of trees in the distance. Leia led them along a worn groove where the grass didn’t grow so well or so high, trampled by years of hooves; and then, as though she’d conjured it from thin air, a river appeared to part the green.

“Look,” Rey said to the cows, nudging Falcon so that he, in turn, could nudge them in the right direction. “Your mama led us to water.”

She counted her charges at the river’s edge, then climbed out of the saddle to drop into the grass with a soft _oof_. Her thighs ached and her arse was sore, but it was that satisfying kind of burn, the one she didn’t mind. It meant open skies and rolling landscapes and steady meals and money in her pocket. It meant fresh air and freedom. 

She kept Falcon’s reins loosely in hand and lay back, sinking into the grass. It was tall enough that it had brushed her knees when she was standing; now it haloed the sun, and Rey stretched her hand out above her head, palm up to cup the burning circle it made. She spread her fingers, watching their outline move, squinting against the bright light.

“Having fun down there?”

She’d have known it was Ben even if he hadn’t spoken; she recognised the fall of his hair, the curve of his shoulders, even in silhouette. 

She dropped her hand. He was blocking the sun now, and as Rey’s eyes adjusted to the shadows she saw Ben’s eyes, his long nose, the twist of his mouth as he chewed his bottom lip. He’d taken off his hat; was holding it by the wide cowboy-brim, turning it over and over between his hands. 

“Change of scenery,” she said, shrugging against the grass. “Clouds instead of cows.”

Ben _laughed_. It surprised her; Falcon too, jerking his head up from the grass for a moment, tossing his mane.

Ben’s laugh was different from the way it had been in the truck, with Han between them. This time he threw his head back, and the light flared around his moving silhouette, rays of sunshine that striped warmth across her face and arms. The satisfaction she’d taken in annoying him twisted and faltered, altering itself until it was something…entirely different.

The laugh ebbed. Ben looked back down at her again, casting another shadow, and Rey felt the new feeling stir and bloom in her chest. He was still spinning the hat slowly in his fingertips, shifting the definition of muscle and tendon in his arms, and before Rey could catch herself she licked the full curve of her mouth, as though she were chasing droplets of water on parched lips.

Ben cleared his throat, dropped his hands to his sides. His gaze moved into the grass, and there was that little frown again, the same as it had been in the truck. Now it made Rey’s heart feel like it had been dropped in ice water.

She sat up, resting her arms along her bent knees. Ben stepped back. For a moment neither was looking at the other; only existing in amongst the noise and the managed chaos around them. 

“We’re moving soon.” Ben’s voice was brusque, as though he’d never laughed at all. “So be ready to get going.”

He stayed a second longer than his tone had implied he would—squeezed the brim of the hat like he wanted to clench his fist—and then walked away. The sun burst through to take his place again, and Rey watched him head back to the river bank, red plaid and faded denim bright against the dark coats of the cattle. 

He waded into the water and crossed to the other bank, where Silencer was nosing at the grass and drinking. It felt like too much of a metaphor, Rey thought, to watch Ben on the other side of a physical barrier; too much of a mirror for whatever it was keeping him back from her. Two weeks of frowns and monosyllables, no matter what Poe had said.

_Don’t forget that just for a pair of pretty eyes_, she told herself, taking a breath; using it to package up the feeling that had stirred and hiding it away.

* * *

Sleeping beneath stars had felt normal for so long that Rey almost never thought about it. The first ceiling she’d slept under had been covered with plastic glow-in-the-dark ones—she could remember that, and her mother’s voice, and not much else—and now, as she stared up at the midnight sky from her bedroll, she wondered if that was a kind of pre-destiny. The image of those stars on the backs of her eyelids was all her parents had given her. 

Poe shifted a few feet away, soft snores momentarily crescendoing and then easing again. Bibi snuffled and rolled onto his back. Kaydel and Jessika were further up the gentle slope, and Luke and Leia had laid down in the shadow of the chuckwagon. Ben was closer to the tree line, his back rising and falling with sleep. They were scattered over the grass like the blown-off branches of trees, a haphazard pattern of wherever-I-lay-my-hat, and Rey longed to join them.

Instead she was as wide awake as she had been at dawn. The irritation and satisfaction and breathless energy were refusing to submit; were instead winding themselves inside her organs, making room in her lungs and heart and over her skin. Even the gentle touches of a nighttime breeze felt harsh, too much.

It was Ben’s fault, she decided, sitting up, settling her chin into the groove of her drawn-up knees. If only he hadn’t _laughed_.

A walk. That would help. 

The ache in her muscles was a sweet sting, and she stretched quietly, climbed out of her bedroll. The moon bathed the world in silvered night, and Rey could see the trees at her back and the ridge before her clearer than they’d been at dusk. 

It only took a minute or two to reach the bluff where the grass ended and the rockface fell away to the river below. This was the nearest the drive would get to the sky—from tomorrow the ground would begin to slope down instead of up—and the world looked like the miniature landscape of a snow globe. 

Rey settled a few feet from the edge, crossed her legs beneath her. Montana stared back, a rolling, undulating sweep of peaks and valleys turned all the same colour by moonlight. Above them, the stars were unimaginable in number, clustered into thick shades of blues and reds and whites, and she counted the constellations she could recognise from all those nights in California. Ursa Minor. Ursa Major. Cygnus. Cassiopeia.

Rey breathed, and her heart burned a little less. The small, scared child who still lived in there would never get over a view like this.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

His voice was rough with it, Rey could tell. It made her shiver in a way she didn’t want to think about, and Ben must have misunderstood—god, she _hoped _he had—because he took the two or three strides required to move forward and placed his jacket over her shoulders.

“Oh.” The denim was worn butter-soft, and it smelled of horse and dust and sweetgrass, and something that was innately Ben. “Thank you.”

He sat in the grass with her, long legs stretched out. He was dressed for sleeping too—that memorable pair of pyjama pants (plaid, like everything else in the wardrobes at Varykino), and a black tee—but he’d pulled his boots on, left them unlaced. The soles were inches from the edge of the bluff and the fifty-foot drop below.

“It’s my favourite part.”

For once, he wasn’t looking at her. Perhaps that was what gave Rey the bravery to turn and watch him as he spoke. 

“Part?”

“Of this,” he said, lifting one hand from the grass to gesture at the view. “The moment when the world is furthest away.”

The Chicago resonance in his voice came back to her. For days Ben had been in his plaid shirt and threadbare denim and wide-brimmed hat, riding through sagebrush and sweetgrass with the backdrop of the neverending Montana sky. Rey couldn’t imagine him in a world which wasn’t this one.

“What do you do?” she asked, threading blades of grass between her fingers. “When you’re not here?”

“Now? Nothing. I quit my job at the start of the year.”

“Oh.” Not that long after Han— 

“It wasn’t—” Ben rubbed a hand over his face, frowned at the horizon. “It wasn’t good for me. Or for anyone, really. So, I quit. I left the city. I came back—”

_Home_. The word was loud and unsaid.

Rey pulled; the grass came free from the soil, and she rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger, twisting the blades together. 

“That was brave.”

Ben turned sharply. His gaze felt heavy.

“Brave?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “It’s not easy, going back home. I—well.” The garage under the arches; the traffic and noise and people. As far behind Rey as she could possibly put them. “I just think it’s brave, is all.”

“Thanks,” Ben murmured.

Quiet; only the breeze in the pines behind them, the chatter of crickets. Rey uncurled the twisted grass, then twisted it again. The feeling she’d been running from all day, that had interrupted her sleep—that she’d come up here to _escape from_—ignited again with the soft, wistful tone of Ben’s voice, with the way he glanced down at the winding movement of her hands and then back to her face again.

“I used to do the drive with my dad,” he began.

_Never seen a kid take to riding a horse like that_, Han had said, face lit by the evening fire. _Ben was born to it._

“I know,” Rey said. “He mentioned it once.”

Those brief windows, slices of a life Rey had never known. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Rey’s brows quirked. “What—?”

“That’s what I came up here to say. That I’m sorry for being an asshole all week.”

Frowns and monosyllables and short, barked laughter. _Sounds like my dad. Lots of promises._

“It’s—” he began; ran his hand through his hair. “I was mad because you had the last two years of my dad’s life, and I didn’t.”

The confession felt like a weight on Rey’s chest, pushing the air out to wind her; crushing in its simplicity. 

Ben glanced at her, painted in nervousness, a touch of shame. “I have a lot of shit to work through.”

Rey thought of the photographs on the mantel at Varykino. There was one coloured by time, of a tiny boy and his father, a crisp summer sky and lush sepia-toned green behind them. Ben was grinning, reaching up to the sky from the safety of Han’s arms. 

She couldn’t count how often she’d seen flashes of the same photograph in Han’s wallet. 

“Two weeks,” Rey said. 

Ben frowned. Rey bit her lip, smile escaping beneath the snag of her teeth.

“Right.” His frown dipped, instead wound up the corner of his mouth in understanding. “Right. Being an asshole for two weeks. I’m sorry.”

Rey let her smile widen, shine full in the moonlight. She’d never liked to waste her life on hard feelings. 

**Author's Note:**

> The city farm Rey grew up with is a reference to [Vauxhall City Farm](https://www.vauxhallcityfarm.org/).
> 
> A [chuckwagon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuckwagon) is a wagon or vehicle carrying supplies and provisions for cooking.


End file.
